Update the journey

It's been a while since I have posted.  Since I have been on here I took a bit of a rest and then went back at it.  My fitness journey took a bit of a back seat to my life that was on hold for one year while I was in the Beta program.  Many many things got very far behind from simple neglect.  I had a hard time maintaining balance in my life and learning to fit in the fitness that I committed to.

Since the break I have slowly started to build up my fitness.  I am trying to build up to running for 1 hour 5 days a week.  I am slowly doing this.   I continued to run about 3 to 4 days a week for 30 minutes and I am still tracking my heart range with my monitor to make sure that I am in my zone for an aerobic workout.  I then moved up to doing 45 minute jogs and have moved up now doing 60 minute jogs.  So far my 60 minute jogs have been 2 - 3 days per week.  I am still not there with consistent jogging in my heart rate range for the whole 60 minutes but it is getting easier.

My results from my year long fitness where somewhat confusing however there seems to have been some improvement in my overall health although it is hard to understand the results.  It is unfortunate that we did not have the chance to meet with someone from the program to go over our results.  That would have been very helpful.

I am on to a couple of new journeys in my health improvement.  My first one is I have finally joined Weight Watchers.  I am an online WW member and find it much easier than attending the meetings.  In the past when I joined I went to the meetings instead and found sometimes it was difficult to commit to the time.  I guess you have to look at it a time for you.  Seems like women in general don't have a lot of me time.  That being said that now that I have become a regular runner I don't want to use the meeting time when I could be doing a run instead so that's why I joined on line.  The online program is cheaper and has many very useful on line tools and I find it easier to track my food.  I really hated writing it down but now those choices and tracking are just a click away.

My weight watchers diet journey began on May 5th and this morning I am down a total of 15 pounds.  Healthy eating and portion control is the plan for Weight Watchers while encouraging to get moving.  While in the Beta fitness research project we were not permitted to diet however it would have been the optimal time but now that I have the fitness part under control and managed into my life schedule I can now fit my new eating style into my life.  One change, one step at a time.  Change can be difficult to manage however from what I understand it takes about 3 months to make or break a habit so I am close to 1/2 way there with my diet and hope by Christmas to have lost about 50 lbs total.  I'll be a whole new healthy me!

I have also heard about a new research project on the Calgary news that is being run by the U of C and it is focused on seniors who run and preventing injury to the knee.  I am very interested in this recent project and have asked for info to see if I might qualify.  This week I have answered a few questions and it appears that I would qualify.  This research project is only 8 weeks long so will be easy since it is not one year of commitment like Beta.  You also need to be running between 10 - 20 klm per week and I am already doing over 10 k.  I guess I will hear more.  I think that this would be beneficial since I would really like to understand how not to injury myself while running.  I know that the potential for some kind of injury is always there.    The research website  run healthy aging research project

I still can't thank everyone enough from the Beta trainers and the program for inspiring me to improve my over all health.  It was a difficult journey over the past year and somehow I made it and now I am able to maintain what I have acquired as part of the program.  Without the Beta program, the trainers and the sponsors I would not have been able to do this and I whole heatedly want to thank everyone for inspiring my journey - you have changed my life!